Dr. Deborah Knox was one of three computer science faculty members across New Jersey who received honors at the Computer Science Education awards ceremony this summer.  Knox was awarded for Outstanding Performance in Computer Science Education at an Undergraduate and M.S.-Granting New Jersey Institution for her work with TCNJ’s computer science students.  Dr. Brian Kernighan of Princeton University and Ms. Junilda Spirollari of NJIT were also honored at the ceremony.

The awards ceremony was held on the Kean campus on Wednesday, August 17 in conjunction with the third annual Computer Science Chairs Conference.   The event was organized by Dr. James Geller of NJIT and Patricia Morreale of Kean University, and was created to celebrate the contributions and dedication of Computer Science faculty to their respective institutions.

Congratulations to Dr. Knox!

For more information on the Computer Science Education Awards event:

http://patch.com/new-jersey/westorange/njit-co-hosts-inaugural-computer-science-education-awards-ceremony

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/njio-nci082616.php

Computer Science and Mathematics double major Brittany Reedman (class of 2018) has been inducted into the TCNJ Blue and Gold Award Hall of Fame!  The Blue and Gold Awards honor students who have made significant and continual contributions to The College of New Jersey community as student leaders.   Students are nominated by faculty members and awardees are selected by a committee.  Brittany was the only sophomore of the ten awardees who were inducted on the evening of Wednesday, April 20 in the Education Building.

 “When I found out I was nominated for the Blue and Gold Hall of Fame, I was so grateful for having professors that believe in me and thought I would be deserving of such an award,” Reedman said.  “With a school full of so many amazing leaders, all with a strong presence at TCNJ, I thought actually receiving the award was a long shot.  After discovering I was chosen for the Blue and Gold Hall of Fame, I was truly honored and now am more determined than ever to make my last two years here as impactful as possible.”

In addition to her academic achievements, Brittany’s accomplishments in the TCNJ community are equally impressive.  She is a member of TCNJ’s honors program, plays on the college varsity tennis team, serves as secretary of the TCNJ chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and is president of the Women in Computer Science (WICS) organization.

As the WICS president, Brittany has invited inspirational and successful women in the computing field to speak to and meet with CS students.  She also introduced “Lean In Circles” based on the concept popularized by Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Facebook, to provide an improved sense of community within the organization and to create a support structure for members.

In fall 2015, she applied for and received a very competitive scholarship that enabled her to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing held in October 2015, in Houston, Texas.  The Grace Hopper Conference is the largest annual international gathering of women in the computing fields.

Brittany has also served as a student volunteer for many Computer Science open house and high school outreach events, and also helped organize and run the February 2016 HackTNCJ event.

Congratulations to Brittany on receiving this prestigious TCNJ award!

If you’d like additional information about the Blue and Gold Awards, please view the Office of Student Activities webpage.

Article written by Dr. Deborah Knox

Christopher Hranj, Class of 2016, has been selected to participate in a 10-week summer fellowship program sponsored by hackNY.  This competitive program was founded in 2010 to “create and empower a community of student-technologists” and is supporting 27 students this summer.

This is an opportunity for participants from around the world to advance their quantitative and computational skills in a hacking community.  Each Fellow contributes as an employee of a vetted New York City startup company that demonstrates innovative technology application and provides a strong mentoring environment for the student.  Projects draw upon students’ skills in software engineering, front-end and back-end support, design, and data science.  The intensive program pairs up “the best technical minds with great NY startups.” In addition to receiving technical and career advice from their mentors, twice a week the students engage in a curated speaker series with leaders from the NYC startup community.

Chris is looking forward to all the Fellowship offers and to working at BuzzFeed this summer where he anticipates supporting back-end services in a Python environment.  He knows that this experience will help him plan for his next steps in his post-graduate job search.  This is not Chris’ first experience in a startup environment; last summer he landed an internship with Twilio, located in San Francisco.

“BuzzFeed is a cross-platform, global network for news and entertainment that generates six billion views each month. BuzzFeed creates and distributes content for a global audience and utilizes proprietary technology to continuously test, learn and optimize.”  BuzzFeed.com

Congratulations to Chris for being selected for this competitive hackNY Fellows program!  We wish him great success in the vibrant environment at BuzzFeed and look forward to hearing more about his projects and experiences living and working in NYC.

Prepared by Dr. Deborah Knox, March 31, 2016

Two Computer Science students have been selected for participation in undergraduate research programs this summer. Angela Huang (Class of 2017) will be in St. Louis, Missouri and Elisa Idrobo (Class of 2018) will head to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for a Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) program. Both programs will provide mentorship as the students conduct independent research guided by university faculty, graduate students, and post-doctoral students. Each student will also participate in career development workshops, and will engage in social, intellectual, and cultural experiences while exploring her host city.

Angela Huang has been selected as an Amgen Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, where she plans to participate in research supporting algorithm development in computational biology.  This is not the first REU experience for Angela, who is currently a junior.  During Summer 2015, she participated in an REU at Louisiana State University, focusing her research on “Computational Forensics: Creating a Digital Environment for Facial Synthesis and Reconstruction” during Summer 2015.

Angela shares, “I applied to this Amgen program because of its focus on biomedical research. As a computer science major, I have come to appreciate how interdisciplinary this field can be. It’s exciting to be able to apply what I have learned in my courses to open problems in domains that can benefit from improved computational techniques. Biology is an excellent example of such a domain.  I plan to apply to graduate school for computer science, with a focus in the area of computational biology. I am positive that this summer experience will be a wonderful learning opportunity that will help prepare me for my future goals.”

Elisa Idrobo is looking forward to TECBio REU at the University of Pittsburgh this summer.  The TECBio program focuses on the “simulation and visualization of biological systems at multiple scales.”  Elisa will be mentored by Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University professors, and anticipates working on an interdisciplinary project such as exploring algorithms for drug discovery, the use of machine learning to predict protein-protein interaction, or computer simulations of biological systems.  There will be weekly seminars and a journal club for REU students to analyze and present current research articles.  Last summer, Elisa participated in an interdisciplinary research project, “Detecting Calling Male Frogs Above the Background Chorus Noise”, where she created a Java based simulation of a model in the TCNJ Mentored Undergraduate Summer Experience (MUSE) research program in 2015.

Elisa is seeking connections between fields: “I’m interested in biology and want to explore how  it can be related to computer science. This summer I hope to gain more experience in doing research and have a better idea of whether I want to continue on to grad school after graduation.”